Welcome back to the Toy Crypt and my fourth installment of FFZ’s Halloween Horror Month! Today I’m wrapping up my look at Jada’s assortment of 6-inch Universal Monsters figures. So far, we’ve checked out Dracula, The Gillman, and Frankenstein’s Monster, and now it’s finally time for a lady monster… Here comes The Bride!

The Bride of Frankenstein is such a delightfully weird film. It can turn on a dime from innocents being murdered to Una O’Connor’s wacky antics as Minnie. It casually drops Dr. Pretorius’ ability to grow miniature humans in jars, which seems a lot more advanced than his desire to recreate a single full-grown human by stitching bodies together. Besides the fact that I never know whether that whole scene is supposed to invoke shock and horror or is it being played for laughs. And, of course, the film relegates the instantly iconic Elsa Lanchester’s role as the titular Bride to about five minutes of screen time. Absolutely criminal! I do enjoy watching this film, but it’s without a doubt the strangest among these four classic monster flicks.

And yet The Bride is indeed so damn iconic, and I’m pleased to say that Jada did a fine job bringing her to this collection. And with soft goods no less! Yes, The Bride comes donning a long white dress, which is expertly tailored and looks great on the figure. There’s plenty of room for her to move her legs, and it’s sleeveless so as not to impede her arms either. When worn, you can see her bandaged arms and feet, and really nothing else, so let’s take it off and see what’s going on under there!

The dress secures in the back with a velcro strip, so taking it off is pretty easy. With the dress gone, The Bride is bandaged from neck to toe. It’s cool to see that Jada didn’t cheap out on what’s underneath. Every inch of her bandaged bod includes the sculpted detail of the wrappings, all realistically textured and even given a paint wash to bring out all those details. Sans dress, you can also get a better idea of what’s going on with the articulation. Yup, it’s mostly more of the same, although Jada did take a page out of Hasbro’s book by nixing the double-hinged elbows for their lady figure and replacing them with rotating hinges. As a result, The Bride has a lot less range of motion in the elbows than the others.

The standard portrait is pretty damn good. At least, I think the likeness is a lot closer to the mark to Lanchester than Frankenstein was to Karloff. However, I think I recall The Bride having visible scars and stitching running up in front of and behind her ears, which isn’t present here. There is a seam that sort of works as a stand in, but it’s an odd detail to omit. The eyes appear to be halftone printed and the lips and eyebrows are pretty sharp. Of course, the iconic hair is recreated quite well too. All in all, very nice.

The alternate portrait is her screaming at the sight of her Groom to Be, and while I think this one loses something in the likeness, I don’t think it’s all that bad. The open mouth looks good, but the teeth really needed some added detail. I’m not sure I’ll end up displaying this head on the figure a lot.

In terms of accessories, The Bride comes with an extra pair of hands, which look to be copying one of the more common production stills, which has her posing with her left arm straight across her chest and her right arm drawing up to her left shoulder. Unfortunately, because of those elbows, she really can’t recreate that pose so well. She also includes the pylons that were on either side of her when she emerged from the operating table. These are pretty simple and have a chain and a strand of wrapping attached to the top of each.

I think The Bride may be my second favorite figure in this assortment, right behind The Gillman. The soft goods dress is a big hit, and I love that Jada still gave her a full body sculpt underneath. The only other figure I’ve ever owned of The Bride was the retro-style 3 3/4-inch ReAction figure, and this is certainly a huge step up and a nice way to round out this Quartet of Classic Horror.

Considering all I knew Jada for was their lines of mediocre painted miniatures, I think they did a damn fine job on this run of 6-inch figures. They don’t feel like an early effort, but rather like they came out of the gate swinging. I haven’t heard a huge amount of buzz around these, and I’m hoping that they do well from word of mouth, because I would very much like to see a second wave with The Mummy and The Wolfman, and whoever else they want to scare up!